Does the mass media really know how to communicate the stuff that people care about? Or does it always prefer to get stuck into a good old scandal? Scandals don’t come much bigger than the one that just engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Starting in the UK, the wave has now hit stateside – and still dominates Europe’s headlines and op-eds.

French newspaper Le Monde quips, “James Murdoch, the son-and-heir, placed on the ejector seat.”  Spain’s El Pais comments, “Murdoch the emperor defrocked” (by the House of Commons’ culture committee).

Why the snowball effect and why the relative blind-siding of other stories? Can these guys just not resist the temptation to report scandals?  It is not that the audience never cared about the Murdoch scandal. Doubtless, many people were fascinated. But it does not affect their livelihoods – unless, perhaps, they work in the media. Other big issues have been relatively sidelined as a result – the Greek debt crisis, and the drought and emerging famine in the horn of Africa  are two relatively neglected issues which really do touch ordinary lives. Maybe the media is giving people what they want, but too much of it for too long. In the midst of a scandal, when does the media pause for a second and determine when it’s over and time to move on to other topics of audience interest?

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According to Wikipedia, “Communication planning is the art and science of reaching target audiences using marketing communication channels such as advertising, public relations, experiences or direct mail for example. It is concerned with deciding who to target, when, with what message and how.”

OK, so there are some things I like about the definition, but there’s a lot left to wonder about. As I continued to untangle the concept of Communications Planning, an idea hit me. Planning is a simple process and we all do that in our daily lives. We plan our days, vacations, even careers. What constitutes a successful Communication plan?

The challenge is—communicators attend to unrealistic service expectations and accept tangential business partner’s requests all the time. The Communication function is struggling to serve and be recognized as a valuable business partner and demonstrate its impact in achieving organizations’ goals.

Need of the hour – Find Alignment

To maximize Communications’ strategic contribution to the organization, you must align the priorities of the function with organization’s priorities. A communication plan is your best aid to achieve this goal. A well articulated Communication plan helps the team focus on the areas where they can have the most impact.

Many might disagree on the degree of importance of having a Communication plan. Not so long ago, a colleague of mine, Rick DeLisi wrote about a radical idea of No-Plan Planning. Some communicators believe that planning is quickly becoming a thing of the past and with frequently changing environment, you cannot succeed with a fixed plan for an entire year. While I do agree that the time has come for having a super-flexible adaptable strategic plan, going without a plan still seems like a risky ride to me.

Do you have a strategic plan in place? What purpose does it solve? Share your ideas with us—are you thinking about setting up a Communication plan in near future? Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

When it comes to employee and executive relations within a company, a little extra face time can go a long way. Establishing a connection between lower-level employees and C-level executives can help boost office morale, and increase the staff’s discretionary effort.

But, given everyone’s busy schedules, it’s often too difficult to create those connections.

So, what can you do to improve executive visibility with employees?

A member recently posed this question in our Employee Communications Forum, sparking a dialogue between executives offering suggestions on new and creative ways to reach the employee base. We also had a similar question asked separately in the forum, specifically on connecting the CEO with staff.

Here are a few key takeaways from the two discussions:

• Solicit Q&A. Companies have found success posting a “solicitation” for questions, and then asking the CEO or executive to answer them in a video posting. While other forms of media can be used to deliver answers, being able to see the executive speaking is a particularly authentic way. Read More »

Last week I attended a company training on ethical leadership. A group of 25 of us sat in tables of five to discuss our company’s code of conduct and debate interpretations of the code in relation to scenarios. The intro to the session was short, and the majority of the time was spent with our small groups deep in discussion. The facilitator was explicit in his intent for us to learn from one another.

As we worked through the scenarios as a group, an amazing thing happened. Issues that appeared black and white suddenly became nuanced as colleagues shared stories from other parts of the business. I learned about new products and services in development. I appreciated the challenges of managing large teams in our global offices. I played devil’s advocate (a subconscious ploy to “look smart”? see below…) and peppered the group with questions, recognizing in me a growing ability to confidently debate ideas.

A mandatory training transformed into an enlightening experience where I developed a new understanding of my company, my colleagues, and myself. I recognized that I have a skilled and thoughtful network of people at my company who are eager to support one another. Had this session been a typical online learning module or lecture, the impact on me as a person and emerging leader would not have been the same.

Peer sharing and learning is a critical driver of employee performance, especially during times of “high change”. Companies that focus on helping their employees to connect, share, and learn are building the infrastructure on which the company can adapt quickly and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

What does this mean for you in Communications? Communications has a real opportunity to serve as the “company networker,” the function that enables employees to learn and develop through communication with one another. Think about it. You already host events that bring employees together—CEO town halls, appreciation events, strategy kickoffs, service opportunities. But while employees are in the same physical space, are they talking to one another? Are they sharing their thoughts and opinions? Are they meeting new colleagues?

Typically what we hear is that employees file into a large auditorium, the CEO delivers an inspiring speech, receives an applause, begs the audience for questions, and then hears crickets. Employees then file out, back to their desks never having spoken a word to one another. What a wasted opportunity!

We think Communications can help create an environment in which productive peer learning is more likely to occur. What if you took your existing toolkit—the annual leadership meetings, the quarterly town halls, the intranet—and improved them by making them peer-sharing friendly?  How might you do things a bit differently? Here are key principles to follow to create this environment to get started.

4 Principles for Peer Sharing and Learning

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By Kirsten Robinson

To keep your competitive edge, your company has to adapt to change—and quickly. But to do this, it’s crucial to have strong leaders who can promote the necessary culture of action by providing employees with the information and support to make smarter decisions.

Unfortunately, most leaders are under pressure to simply tell employees what to do, versus empower them to come up with their own solutions. Even with all of the right intentions, leaders tend to revert to the managerial mode of “command and control”—and inadvertently resist empowering their employees.

In a recent webinar, members sounded off on why they think managers resist empowerment,

• “Managers are afraid that the employee they’re empowering may have better ideas or better initiatives than themselves.”
• “They’re concerned with how poor results from their reports will reflect on them.”
• “Managers fear of losing control.”
• “They feel like they are supposed to have all the answers.”

These answers all have something in common; they address underlying fears in leaders. But, you can’t just tell leaders to empower employees—you have to help them discover how to empower. Read More »

As the global economy slowly claws its way towards recovery, M&A is beginning to reappear on the corporate agenda; indeed, the average company will make 1-2 acquisitions (of varying sizes, of course) in the next 12 months.

With M&A on the rise, CEC spent some time recently looking at what role communications can play in ensuring the success of deals; for years, analysts have been placing deal failure somewhere between 50-90% of the time – which is a pretty spectacularly poor return! Recent figures are not much different, with a recent study by PWC reporting only 51% of deals met their objectives.

So, what can communicators do to help reverse this trend?

What might not come as a surprise to many is that often, communicators get brought into the deal so late that they don’t always get much of an opportunity to play their part in full! A common anecdote from those I spoke with went something like this: “I got a call on Saturday, telling me ‘we’re announcing a deal on Monday – we need you to come into the office.”’ Sound familiar?

Before a deal’s even in the pipeline, it’s important to clarify your role with the deal team. To help members do this, in this toolkit CEC has outlined:

• the three key stages of the M&A process
• the risks to which the business is exposed at each stage
• tools to help communicators mitigate those risks

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In our latest CEC study “Building a Change-Ready Organization”, we argue that instead of “responsive” employees who wait to follow directions and change when told, organizations need “agile” employees to deal with a rapidly changing environment.  Agile employees are a good thing because they are drivers of change, not simply objects of change. They are also valuable because they perform better. If you are agile, your company should want to retain and nurture you (well smart companies anyway).

But what does it really mean to be an “agile” employee? And are you one!?

Below are 6 statements which capture different aspects of workplace agility and together define what it means to be an “agile” employee.  Think about how each statement reflects who you are at your job and honestly answer to yourself whether you “agree”, “disagree” or “somewhat agree” that the statement reflects YOU.

• I adapt my work as necessary to new situations
• I try new approaches and styles to see what works best
• I seek corrective feedback to improve
• I actively seek new opportunities to learn from others
• I help peers to think through new ways of doing things
• I share my successes or failures to help peers learn

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What does the word empower mean to you? As an individual it might conjure up feelings of freedom, control, authority, ownership. To be empowered means to be an agent, a person who has the power to act. Empowerment, or autonomy, is one of author Daniel Pink’s three key ingredients to intrinsic motivation. When each of us feels a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose at work, we bring our best selves everyday and thrive.

But, as a manager, the word empower can be much more ferocious. From a manager’s perspective, empower means one thing—chaos. It means losing control, taking on risk, exposing the ego, relying on others but being accountable for results. Dilbert accurately describes what empowerment typically means to a manager:

(click to enlarge)

Leaders and managers don’t publicly fear empowerment; like in Dilbert, they often advocate for the right and authority for employees to make decisions and feel ownership. The word empower is easy to say, hard to act on, and easy to misinterpret. We in Communications can help make this fluffy word translate into concrete actions.

Here are 10 of the 20 tips for empowerment that GlaxoSmithKline’s CPSE group provides its managers to help them get into new habits that empower their teams. Use them in your day-to-day, share them with your managers, take a look around the organization and ask yourself if you see leaders and managers behaving in this way. For the full set of 20, visit the CEC website.

10 Ways to Empower Your Team Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

I have a confession: I love Facebook. I use it to communicate and keep in touch with friends and family dispersed globally—and the platform’s functionality makes it easy to do so. In fact, I probably communicate more with out-of-area friends now than I would without the network. Working and on different schedules, it’s often difficult to catch a friend for a phone conversation. Facebook enables me to share photos of what I’ve been up to, and shoot a quick “thinking of you” message that does the trick until we can catch up in full later on.

Even if you don’t use Facebook, odds are that you know at least 2 (or 200?) people who do for personal communications. What if you could transfer this massively popular method of communicating into your business?

The question is, does Facebook, or a tool like it, have a place in your internal communications strategy?

An executive in our Intranets Working Group recently posed this question, starting a dialogue among members. The majority was in favor—as one Senior Manager of Online Comms said, “Business success is often built on strong working relationships, and internal social media can foster those across the organization.” But, they also recognized that tool management is key in order to avoid misuse. Here are a few key takeaways from their discussion: Read More »

When I was about seven, my dad designed and built an awesome kids playset.  It was a towering wooden structure that took up half the side yard and had everything from swings to a sandbox to a fireman’s pole.  (A fireman’s pole! )

This was what I now recognize to be The Best Parenting Strategy Ever.  Not only did it keep us active and entertained—and outside!—but it meant that all the kids in the neighborhood came to us.  It meant that my parents always knew where we were and who we were hanging out with and could keep a close eye on us with minimal effort.

I am reminded of what I will now dub The Playset Strategy when I look at what some of our most progressive financial institutions are doing with social media. They are making sure that they are building out their websites with the information and interactivity their customers want and need in order to make good financial decisions.  This may involve discussion boards, or customer ratings, or product reviews.  The most progressive companies leave these venues largely unmediated, which may involve actually hosting with their own technology comments that could be critical of their organization.  Why on earth would they do this?   It’s the Playset Strategy.  They’re making sure their customers stay home and invite their friends over instead of wandering off elsewhere for their needs.

This highlights a drastic shift in how we’re thinking about our customers.  When it comes to sales and customer service, the prevailing view in banking has been that our customers want to walk into a branch and have a conversation with a real person while they sip on our complimentary coffee.  All that’s left is to prove to the world that we are the only bank that REALLY offers good customer service (good luck with that—if you think that you are strong in this area, check out our work on brand differentiation and most companies’ chronic lack thereof).

The only catch—your customers are pretty much just using you for the free beverage.  One of our sister councils—the Council on Financial Competition—just completed a survey of customers across seven countries.  They found that one in three customers is making financial decisions based on information they’ve found through social media sources (aka, not your branch).  More and more of them are what the CFC has coined as “informational millionaires”—they’re coming into our branches having already made up their minds and are simply using our facility as a really nice checkout counter.

So we can either let them fish around online and through their own networks of friend and family recommendations, or we can put ourselves at the center of their information gathering universe by making ourselves useful in their quest.  Read More »